The picture that has remained in the public perception of Aldous Huxley is not exactly that of a humorous person. If you still know the writer today, then for his dystopia “Beautiful New World”, which is always often cited when it is to be shown how bad it is around us. And how Huxley was already looking for it in great foresight in the 1930s. That may make some people want to do their books, others understandably not.
The latter should therefore prefer to start with another book by the British, with one that is equally clairvoyant, but is light and humorous. “Along the road – records of a traveler”, a collection of short essays of Huxleys, appeared in the original exactly a hundred years ago, but inexplicably never in German. Fortunately, the journalist and translator Willi Winkler has now changed this.
No more than a myth
Huxley's texts date from the interwar years. So he is traveling in a time that is often connected to sophisticated travel of stubborn individualists, optionally with adventure or luxury. Huxley's observations prove that – at least in parts – this is nothing more than a myth. Because even then, he writes, people were not only out of the world, but simply because you did it like this: “It is part of being in certain places in the wide world and once you were there, you are superior to everyone who was not there.”
Describes Huxley sadly tourist masses (“I have already seen happier faces on funerals than on the Markusplatz”), today you have to think of the hordes of Instagramers who want to see nothing more than the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Huxley writes the Parisians, it brings the good money.
There is no question that Huxley is not one of the tourists of this kind, but one of the real travelers. This is probably how everyone likes to see themselves, but this little vanity is forgiven because of his ingenuity, his humor and his self -irony. Huxley is not afraid of strong opinions, and he has numerous, often extremely appropriate, on all possible topics. He makes fun of young people with chunky footwear to polish around in the church: “They are hiking birds and, like their romantic and completely unironious name, this truly Schiller name, clearly reveals, from Germany.” And also sharply told your colleagues: “There is no merit not to know what you could know. For example, some writers are literally proud that they have no idea about the natural sciences; These people are idiots and also arrogant. ” Huxley, on the other hand, reads the “Encyclopedia Britannica” on vacation and familiarizes himself before falling asleep with Angio-Sermias, Aphasia or the Aurora Borealis (volume two contains the entries “And-Aus”).
The best picture in the world?
Reading and traveling are two trucks for Huxley, of which he cannot leave, demand time and sometimes bring inconvenience. You always grab more books than you will create, and sometimes it takes you into a drafty, inhospitable valley. The reader has to endure that, the traveler has to endure. Both passions combine that they arise from the inexhaustible need to learn more about the world.
In accordance with this, “Along the Road” is not exclusively about traveling. Rather, the being on the road offers the author a way to think about the world based on his observations. If you travel and see something new, no matter how beautiful, ugly, ugly, curious or boring, you may learn something, think about it. When Huxley, who mostly writes about Italy, drives into the small town of Sansepolcro, in order to marvel at the best picture of the world, the “resurrection” of Piero della Francesca, then takes the fresco to consider the criteria we rate art. Could it be that the “resurrection” is less famous than the “Primavera” by Botticelli, because unfortunately it is not seen in Florence, but in the province?
Sometimes the proximity to some debates that we have today is so great that you am amazed: Huxley has probably never heard of the 4-day week, but he ponderes about the meaning and purpose of the 4-hour day: “What are the leisure time that you are looking for thanks to social reorganization and perfected machines?” People are still spreading with newspapers instead of social media, but also “cheap means of communication and radio spine” play a role. When evaluating older art, which no longer corresponds to our today's views, he wishes mildly: “If we had lived a hundred years earlier, we would not have seen it otherwise.” And adds: “We will also be like the last idiots.” Only in this prophecy was Huxley wrong, at least as far as his book is concerned.
Aldous Huxley: “Along the Road”. Records of a traveler. From the English and afterword by Willi Winkler. Rowohlt Berlin Verlag 2024. 288 S., born, 25, – €.
